


Malcolm Reed And The Order Of The Perfumed Loincloth

by Britpacker



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: M/M, Sequel, Shower Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 14:31:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4610295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Calidi are determined to honour the man who saved their high priest’s life. All they need is a proxy to perform the induction ritual.  Dubbing with a sword it ain’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Malcolm Reed And The Order Of The Perfumed Loincloth

**Author's Note:**

> Finally realised I hadn't posted my pointlessly smutty sequel to "The Last Thing" here and decided to change it. Basically, Malcolm has saved an alien dignitary's life and his species are determined to honour him accordingly...

“Hey, Trip. You got a minute?”

“Anytime, Cap’n.” With a broad grin for his friend and commanding officer Commander Charles Tucker III swung down from Engineering’s upper level, scrubbing his greasy hands against his coverall before making a jovial salute. “Rostov, keep an eye on that coolant level. If it goes above point seven, holler.”

His subordinate’s answering shout was sliced off by the closing of the interior office door. Spinning to lean against his desk, Tucker crossed his arms and cocked his head at the older man. “So: what’s on your mind?”

Archer flushed and pulled both hands tight behind his ramrod back, looking more like a greenhorn called to the ready room than the captain of Earth’s most prestigious starship paying a visit to his chief engineer. “What makes you think…”

“Oh, nothin’.” The cocky grin widened, blue eyes glinting with boyish glee as they met shadowed green. “’cept you never come down here durin’ your bridge shift unless somethin’s _really_ buggin’ you. And if it was about my engines, you’d comm.”

“You know me too well.” Relaxing into a gusty sigh, Archer raked a hand through his sandy hair. “I just took a call from the Crown Prince of Calidi.”

It was his turn to smirk at the instant dissipation of his friend’s high humour. “Fuck. Lemme guess: they want their diaper back?”

“Pretty much.” His voice sounded rusty. Archer cleared his throat. “So, Commander. How’s you love life?”

“About to be brought to a painful end if this is headin’ where I think it’s headin’.” With a shake of his golden head Tucker pushed himself upright to stand with feet apart and shoulders squared, ready to face the blow. “How long have we got?”

“A couple of days. They sent out a warp seven ship this morning.”

Starfleet’s most fearless C.O., Tucker noted, never announced the approach of a Suliban battle fleet with that kind of flat-out dread. And this time he wasn’t even going to be first into the firing line.

“I’ll do my best, Cap’n,” he promised wearily, swamped by a sudden urge to wipe off the shit-eating smug grin that graced his honorary big brother’s craggy face. “But I gotta warn you. History, honour an’ friendly relations between species don’t cut any ice with Mal when you put ‘em up against havin’ his _bits_ washed.”

“Even by you?”

Immediately he regretted the jocular question. Almost impossible to embarrass under any other circumstance, Trip Tucker flushed to the roots of his hair.

“Didn’t you say somethin’ a while back about not wantin’ too much information, Cap’n?” he sputtered, shooting a worried glance to the door seal. Hands raised, Archer swayed back.

“Sorry, sorry. I guess given the smile on my Armoury Officer’s face most mornings, I figured he’d be comfortable with you as the Proxy’s official proxy by now.”

“Yeah, well you’d be wrong.” He was preening at the implication. And, Trip conceded, he should have remembered Malcolm Reed wasn’t the only smart strategist aboard Enterprise. “Okay, okay… I’ll try again tonight. Hell, I’ll even use a silk shirt for the final polish, have ‘im gleamin’ like the port nacelle on launch day.”

Archer shuddered. “That’s not an image I needed, Commander. And it’s not as simple as a rub down with a damp cloth.”

The younger man threw himself into his chair, directing his companion to the other with a grunt. “Figures,” he growled, dead-locking the door with the flick of a switch. “Okay. What’s the ritual, and what does your whippin’ boy – sorry, _proxy_ – have to do in it?”

*

Two hours after Jonathan Archer had sprinted from his office, and still not entirely sure he’d heard the older man’s garbled explanation right, Charles Tucker III shuffled like an aged tramp through the hallways, unsure whether he was headed for the Armoury Officer’s cabin or the nearest airlock. Or, he amended grimly, straight to Sickbay. One way or another, he’d probably wind up there by the end of the night.

Malcolm wasn’t going to like this. Not one bit.

With a heavy hand he punched the Englishman’s doorchime, the gluey feeling at the pit of his stomach freezing solid in the face of the uncharacteristically open smile that greeted him. “This is a pleasant surprise, Commander,” his lover of two weeks purred, easing himself out of his desk chair with the sinuous grace of a big cat. “Isn’t this the your and the captain’s night for ogling over-muscled young bucks in their swimming trunks?”

“I got better things to _ogle_ , Lieutenant,” Tucker parried, opening his arms just wide enough for a lithe man to slide between. He dipped his head, drawing in a deep breath of his lover’s warm, woods-and-moss scent while a pair of talented lips nibbled teasingly at his neck. “Long as I’m not disturbin’ anythin’ important.”

The sable head pulled back, eyebrows drawing together around the small furrow that deepened between. “You’re still in uniform, Malcolm. And I might be wrong, but that’s one helluva fancy computer game on your screen.”

“Oh, that.” Fascinated by a stray whorl of chest hair peeking between the loosened top buttons of his boyfriend’s black undershirt, Reed waved a dismissive hand. “It’s just the E.M. barrier schematic. I’ve had a couple of ideas for improving it.”

“Malcolm.” Exasperation tightened every syllable. “Starfleet’s got _teams_ workin’ on that; Jupiter Station _and_ Earth last time I looked.”

“And they’re all short-trousered theorists who’ve never activated anything outside a computer simulation. Besides, the last time you got snatched by a nasty alien blob I didn’t exactly have time to comm. headquarters for advice.”

“An’ _miaow_ to you too, darlin’.” The memory was, Trip conceded, still raw. Being semi-absorbed into a lonely alien life form wasn’t exactly the highlight of his cruise so far.

Something of his feelings must have shown on his face – hardly a novel event, but one with satisfactory consequences as Malcolm reached up to blot them out with a long, lazy kiss. “Missed you today,” the dark-haired Englishman murmured when oxygen depletion forced them apart. “You didn’t come up to the bridge once.”

“Sorry.” It hit him every time; this light-headed sensation, as if he were outside his own body, barely believing what he saw as Lieutenant Rulebook snuggled into a superior officer’s arms. “Cap’n decided he’d come to see me today.”

“I’ll superglue his arse to the seat so he has to send for you in future.” When he laughed, Malcolm pouted, a blatant invitation to kiss him again. Never one to miss his chances, Trip ducked in.

“ _Very_ nice,” the younger man cooed, his subtle tug enough to start them moving in the direction of his immaculate bunk. “I don’t suppose you’d like to do that again?”

Certain parts of his anatomy, Tucker conceded, had been a tad underused (contrary to his reputation on the lower decks) during the last couple of years. As his pants got tight and everything inside them started to feel tender, he could congratulate himself that at least they hadn’t gotten rusty.

“Anytime,” he promised, pouring the second syllable into the back of his man’s throat. Hands began to roam, hips rocking together as rough twill cloth dissolved to leave smooth, naked skin free to be mapped. The world was getting hazy around him, and he loved it.

Still, something tugged at him, annoying as a wasp at a barbecue. “Darlin’ gimme a minute.”

The softened, tranquil look on those sharp-angled features when Malcolm pulled back almost undid him, but if there was one thing working with a Reed had taught Trip it was the pre-eminent call of duty. “There’s a Calidi ship headin’ out to meet us. Seems they wanna hang your loincloth in some kind of chapel – like the banners of the Garter Knights you told me about hangin’ in Saint, umm, Edward’s.”

“It’ St George’s, Windsor, you ignorant blitherin’ hick: and anyway, banners and badges are a bit more dignified than hanging up a chap’s smalls.” The gleam left Reed’s grey eyes, tarnishing their silver with smoke. “He’s not going to let me get out of this, is he? Archer, I mean.”

“Interplanetary diplomacy an’ personal humiliation say – no.” Puffing out his chest didn’t look so impressive, Tucker discovered, flat out on his back, but trying to retreat with dignity wasn’t going to work.

Making the best of a bad job, he hauled himself upright and offered a hand to the semi-naked brunet. “C’mon, Malcolm. It’ll be fun.”

He caught something about _grubby backwoodsmen_ in the Englishman’s muffled growl, but Reed laced fingers with him readily enough. “Better you than my official proxy, I suppose,” Malcolm conceded, kicking what remained of his uniform away with uncharacteristic carelessness. “A quick rub-down with a chamois and some metal polish, that’s the drill, is it?”

Grandpa Johnson’s prize tomatoes had never attained the perfect crimson hue Trip Tucker saw reflecting back at him off the room’s single small mirror. “Uh, well…not exactly.”

Hoshi called it _The Look_. That narrow-eyed, nostril-flaring, flinty stare was rumoured on the lower decks to freeze iron to its cracking point, and its effect on a dozen different alien species deserved the kind of intensive study only an exuberant Denobulan could provide. Trip cleared his throat.

“Um, you noticed anythin’ funny about the perfumed loincloth they sent you?” he asked, seizing the opportunity of having his man briefly off-balance to pull him in close – thus preventing either a getaway or a demonstration of those legendary Reed fighting skills. Malcolm curled an aristocratic top lip.

“Other than the fact that it smells of bugger all?” he suggested, using their unexpected proximity to nip his lover’s tasty neck. For a nanosecond, Trip completely forgot what they were talking about.

“Yeah,” he agreed vaguely, his focus sharpened by his lover’s disapproving grunt. “The ritual’s s’posed to activate the fragrance, and ‘til that’s done you’re not really a member of the order. Where’d you put it, in the closet?”

“Well I wasn’t going to leave it on public display in the mess.” Through the sarcasm Tucker sensed something else, like a fine gold thread shot through expensive cloth. Interest.

It screamed at him from the light in those wonderful, ever-changing grey-blue-grey eyes; thrummed in the forcedly casual way Reed retrieved the crisp rectangle of white linen from a drawer. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me I have to come all over the blasted thing to _activate the fragrance_ , are you?”

Enterprise lurched alarmingly. Barely aware of the sickly thud of heart hitting bootstrap, Trip steadied himself against his lover’s desk. “Ah, well…yeah.”

Watching Malcolm go cross-eyed as he tried to decide whether that was a serious answer lifted his spirits – or at least, Tucker amended, proved Mal had more control than to shoot the messenger on this occasion. “C’mon, Malcolm. Johnny had to be felt up by a walkin’ whale in front of the king an’ queen of a whole planet. You get some privacy. And you like havin’ my hands on your dick; least, you did this mornin’.”

The instinctive objection died on Reed’s tongue while the portion of his anatomy under discussion leapt in agreement. “That’s different,” he managed throatily. “That was just us.”

“And so’ll this be.” One of them at least was getting aroused by the thought of getting it on in the shower; unfortunately for Trip, he wasn’t sure it was necessarily the right one. “C’mon, into the bathroom. It’ll be…”

“Less messy?” He let out the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. Malcolm wasn’t mad.

Not very.

There again as Tucker knew only too well, spitting blood while nursing a whopping great hard-on wasn’t easy, and the promise of his famously talented (if he did say so himself) hands in a sensitive location seemed to be working wonders on his boyfriend’s temper. “I was gonna say more intimate, but that too.”

Malcolm guffawed like a guilty schoolboy. “Anything’s more intimate than the captain’s experience,” he pointed out, absently rubbing the length of cloth against his chest. “Mmm, it won’t chafe, I don’t think. After you, o ritual cock-washer.”

“I’ve been called worse.” He was actually going to do this. Sudden panic crashed over Trip. “Y’ know, I’ve never done anythin’ like this before?”

A finely-marked brow quirked. “As you so eloquently pointed out, my nether regions aren’t exactly unknown territory.”

“I got the map darlin’; I’ve just never had to read it this way.” The light of laughter in his lover’s expressive eyes calmed him, and tossing the cloth carelessly over his shoulder Trip frogmarched the younger man directly into the compact shower cubicle, adjusting the head to send a stream of tepid water down the centre of his chest. “Now, I’ve gotta get down on my knees and – well, just don’t think of Johnny and an alien whale, or this could take a while, okay?”

“Alien – what?”

“’xactly.” The hot staff cupped in his hand twitched. Trip leaned in to breathe through the thatch of wiry dark curls at its base, drawing the musky smell of his mate deep into his lungs and stirring each individual hair like blades of grass in a breeze. Malcolm’s shiver ran right through both men. “Nice?”

“Mmmm.” Long fingers began to card through his hair, massaging the shower’s fine spray through to darken the honey coloured locks. Lazily Malcolm began to circle his hips, all his strength puddling in the base of his tingling cock. “Very. Oh!”

_Just there_ , Trip thought happily, repeating the pressure of thumb pad low down on the thick underside vein that made his man jerk and moan. Working his other hand around to knead the Englishman’s shapely buttocks he began to pump and squeeze, each fingertip applying its own sweet degree of pressure, like a skilled flautist’s manipulating his instrument.

He’d never been musical, Trip remembered dreamily. But then none of the instruments his granny had wanted him to try were as appealing as Malcolm Reed’s thick, velvety dick.

Pulses of pure pleasure swept over the squirming Englishman as every millimetre of his throbbing length was caressed in a mesmerizingly repetitive pattern. Eyelids growing heavy, Malcolm sagged against the cubicle’s toughened glass, his damp skin sliding against a surface cloudy with condensation while the water temperature rose toward its maximum setting. Steam swirled, damping puckered lips that parted in a strangled sigh of his boyfriend’s name.

“Tell me you’re close, Mal.” Low and hypnotic, Trip’s voice seemed to flow through the blond’s busy hand, down his penis and on to pool like bubbling mercury in his balls, burning them from the inside out. “I’ve got you darlin’, jus’ let it go.”

“Yes, oh Trip, so close.” The tiles beneath his feet had turned to quicksand. Malcolm could feel himself sinking, warmth enveloping him while his universe contracted to the heavenly sensations being drawn from his cock. A wet kiss was bestowed on his hipbone. The hand on his bum moved.

And as he received a final loving squeeze he erupted in thick, wet spurts that drenched the cloth being fluttered like a white flag around his midriff. Fighting for breath he sagged between the wall and the support of his boyfriend’s massaging hands, aware of nothing beyond the drumming in his head and the heavenly warm lassitude of release that swirled out from his loins, washing his world in lovely pastel hues. “Mmmm,” somebody whimpered. “Mmmm.”

Heady as honeysuckle on a humid night the fragrance of the Calidi loincloth swirled through the steamy box, shot through with just enough bitter musk to prevent its cloying stickiness becoming sickly. It wasn’t a smell Tucker had much liked as a kid, but with a nude and sated Malcolm Reed to share it, he decided he might just change his mind.

“Just lay back, darlin’.” Vaguely Reed was aware of the rasp in Trip’s muted voice; something in his mind flared with curiosity, but his scrambled brain cells couldn’t call the necessary burst of activity from his vocal chords to question. A fine mist of rapidly-chilling water ghosted his lax genitals, shielded from the harshness of full spray by Trip’s splayed left hand while the right dabbed and patted with a downy wad of cotton wool. Malcolm tried to lock his weakened knees, sizzles of pleasured pain rippling through his spent flesh. “Gotta get every last drop, okay?”

“’kay.” Of its own volition his satisfied body flowed to the movement of those lovely big hands, the cooling brush of water that should have revitalised him only serving to emphasise the glorious fluffiness of the world he inhabited. Unresisting, he let himself be manipulated out of the tight stall, a small snuffle breaking free when Trip caught his elbow on the door handle and had to smother a curse. “Kiss it better?” he suggested dopily.

“Later.” After the stuffy heat of a steamy cubicle stepping out into the pleasant-summer-evening temperature maintained across the accommodation decks felt like walking into a refrigerator. Gooseflesh swept down Trip’s spine and he had a close-up view of the prickling effect on Malcolm’s flat belly while he wound the length of fragrant linen exactly as Jon had instructed. “Gotta do this right or the High Monarchs of Calidi’ll have my hide.”

“Hmm, I’ll protect you.” The cloth felt, Malcolm discovered, deliciously soft and cool against his skin, the delicate weave almost translucent, outlining his penis and revealing a dark shadow of pubic hair as he regarded himself, heavy-lidded and faintly smiling, the very picture of male satisfaction, in the circular mirror hanging on the far bulkhead. “That was wonderful, love. I’ll be letting you bathe my bits again.”

“Anytime.” For the first time he noticed the fine lines of strain around his beloved’s smouldering eyes; not to mention, Malcolm conceded, the hugely impressive portion of Floridian anatomy waving around like an untethered shuttle. “Does that hurt?” he asked, completely missing the air of innocent concern he’d been aiming for. Trip’s exhale whistled between clenched teeth.

“Hell, yeah,” he grated, rooted to the spot as his boyfriend studied him with the self-assured grace of a hunting cat. He licked his parched lips, pupils dilating more with every move the man made. “Gawd, how hopeless am I? You‘re standin’ there in a stupid giant diaper, an’ I’m so fuckin’ horny I can’t move!”

“It’s a ceremonial loincloth, actually.” A familiar ticking sensation began to crawl out of Malcolm’s balls, leaving him both pleasantly excited and mildly surprised by just how little it took for Trip Tucker to relight that particular fire in him. “I can take it off if you’d prefer; and perhaps we can find somewhere snug for you to put this?”

Thanks to the compact nature of his cabin he didn’t even have to move to reach his boyfriend’s glistening phallus. “Sounds good,” Trip squeaked, darts of fire shooting from tip to base at the scrape of a short nail through the pearl already formed at his slit. The smallest jerk of the head was all it required to send the Southerner tumbling backward onto the bunk, legs akimbo, knees bent and dark blue eyes inviting. “Gotta thank the Calidi,” he growled, his voice deepening with excitement as Reed reached down and back to prepare his way. “Let me deal with that, alright?”

“If I can deal with this.” With the air of a magician Malcolm produced lube from a bedside shelf, dribbling a sizeable dollop onto his target before presenting it to his mate. Which of them moaned loudest when the first broad finger penetrated his hastily-prepared entrance, he wasn’t sure.

A moment later he realised it didn’t matter as something larger, firmer and much more satisfying surged home.

“Malcolm.”

His name, it seemed, was the only word Trip could remember when they began to move, rising and falling in delirious counterpoint, the syllables fragmenting with pleasure’s inexorable rise. He clawed the Englishman’s hips, forcing himself higher, harder until he caught the high-pitched squeal that meant he’d found his lover’s hottest spot, and like a guided missile he locked onto that precious target, the pressure in his balls rising, swelling into his belly and north with every ragged move he made. When he came it was with the force of a star gone supernova, every cell in his body breaking into a billion pieces. It wasn’t until the universe stopped spinning like an out-of-control carousel that he felt the warm spatter over his trunk to prove that Malcolm had climaxed too.

And that the brunet was coming around faster than him, rolling off to the side with a groan Trip echoed at the sting of air against his flopping organ. “That was bloody marvellous,” Reed informed him, rasping slightly. “D’you think the Calidi’d be offended?”

“I won’t tell ‘em if you don’t.” Calidi. Oh, yeah. He remembered them.

Vaguely.

“Deal.” His eyelids were weighted with lead, and the sickly aroma rising from his ceremonial nappy was settling in his sinuses, making his head feel thick and heavy. Sleep. That was what he needed, to snuggle into his lovely Trip’s strong arms and sleep.

Before the thought could be properly finished, Malcolm Reed was dead to the world.

*

“The gathering is rather _small_ , Jonathan-Captain.” Ducking his broad head beneath the wide-open door into the observation lounge Calron, High Prince of the Calidi Empire, assessed the shuffling senior staff with a single large dark eye. “It is traditional for the initiate to be received into the Most Noble Order in the presence of all his kith and kin.”

“The senior staff’s as close as any human gets to kin this far from home, Imperial Highness.” Stepping aside to allow two ungainly whales on pairs of stubby legs to precede him, it was obviously taking all the captain’s considerable reserves of self-control not to either snicker or scream. “If we’ve caused any offence with our arrangements I take full responsibility, and I apologise profusely.”

“No apology is needful, our most excellent friend.” A flipper-like hand lifted and to Trip it felt like some fool had flooded the small room with pure oxygen. “Our guidance states that the nearest connections of the initiate be summoned to attend him. It is, I concede, an ambiguous wording. If Malcolm-Lieutenant is content that his minions are absent…”

Conveniently shielded by the greater bulk of Travis Mayweather the initiate allowed himself a disdainful pup of the mouth at the pejorative term for his staff. “Knowing how Malcolm feels about being the centre of attention, your Highness, I think I can guarantee that,” Archer ad-libbed, the smallest twitch of his First Officer’s port brow the only sign he might not have got away with it. “Is the Table of Welcome set up right?”

“Admirably.” Shuffling, the prince took his place before it and bowed, air expelled through the circular vent in the top of his domed head causing the candle flames to stutter. “If Trip-Commander would be so kind as to lower the main lights, we may begin the ceremony.”

He waited for the captain’s nod before obeying, casting the edges of the room into darkness and leaving the centre to pulse with a soft bronze glow from a dozen of T’Pol’s meditation candles that flickered patterns over the Calidi prince’s flat grey dome. “Malcolm-Lieutenant, respected fellow of the Perfumed Loincloth, if you would receive the honour of brotherhood among us, come forward.”

The rest of the senior staff edged deeper into the shadows as he obeyed, leaving him alone in the spotlight while the prince’s escort began to chant: a low, throbbing sound halfway between the ocean’s roll and the purr of a giant cat that sluiced through the silence, hypnotic and, Reed discovered, strangely soothing. With his stained cloth draped over his upraised palms he approached at a controlled slow-march, his steady gaze fixed on the liquid black eye of the alien for fear that if he glanced aside the barely-controlled hysteria of certain colleagues might affect him.

Broad, flat fingers grasped the edges of the cloth and raised it high. “The aroma is strong; proof of great virility,” Calron approved, the huffs escaping his cranial vent spreading tendrils of the heady fragrance around the room. “You will sire strong progeny someday, Malcolm-Lieutenant.”

That stifled squawk to port was unmistakably Mayweather’s, probably cut short by the jab of Japanese boot into shin. From the starboard side he just caught a glimpse of the fabled Vulcan Brow-Lift.

He was suddenly grateful Trip had taken station behind him. He was never going to hear the end of this.

“Your heirs will be honoured as the sons of the Order throughout eternity, Brother Malcolm-Lieutenant.” The edge of the cloth brushed his cheek and it was all he could do not to flinch, holding his breath against the unlovely combination of honeysuckle and stale semen until the fabric fluttered onto his right shoulder.

The acolyte’s melodious humming reached a crescendo, the sound seeming to press in on him from all four corners of the lounge. He could sense Captain Archer rocking on the balls of his feet nearby; hear Hoshi’s breathing quicken, the sound closing in around her like the solid walls of a maintenance shaft. Prince Calron stooped toward him, the flat of his hand pressing hard against the Englishman’s breastbone. “Malcolm-Lieutenant of the noble clan Reed, scion of the planet named Earth, be welcome among the Brethren of the Perfumed Loincloth! May your seed ever fall upon fertile ground, and your heirs be deserving of thy name!”

On that ringing declaration both Calidi bowed, their broad tail fins lifted to stabilise the ungainly motion. Without another word they shuffled through the stricken senior staff and out into the corridor.

“Um, I think that’s the end of the ceremony, Sir.”

Hoshi hadn’t seemed so small since the early days of their mission, back when she’d been afraid to venture an opinion beyond the narrowest boundaries of her subject. Spinning round, Malcolm forced his facial muscles into what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

T’Pol’s right eyebrow joined the left in her hairline.

Dr Phlox tried and failed to smother a humungous smile.

Every human jaw was on the floor. “What?” he snarled, discomfort making his surly. Biting his lip, Trip shuffled forward with a blunt finger extended toward his chest.

As he glanced down Malcolm felt himself sway, light-headed as if all the blood in his body had been siphoned into his toes. “Oh,” he said faintly.

Emblazoned on his breast in solid gold was the universally familiar form of male genitalia, a small seed pearl shining at the tip. “Oh.”

“Captain.” If he didn’t know it was impossible Malcolm might almost have believed the Vulcan was blushing. “I believe we are expected to accompany the Calidi delegation to the docking hatch.”

He rather doubted the whole staff was expected to wave the aliens on their way, but fixated on the phallic jewel on his chest Reed didn’t feel equal to raising the point. “So, uh, guess that means you’re a knight now,” Trip volunteered, too brightly. “That mean I’ve gotta call you Lord Malcolm or somethin’?”

“Only if you’d like your brains bashing in, Sir.” He could feel the quip working, tension leaking out of his shoulders and rippling like a cooling breeze down his spine. “Bloody hell! As if having my virility discussed before an audience wasn’t embarrassing enough…”

“Hey, it could be worse.”

“They could’ve found me _lacking_ , I suppose.” he conceded, his fingertips lingering on the delicate pearl as they detached his new decoration. Trip snorted.

“Or they could’ve insisted on washin’ your dick in front ‘f the whole crew.”

The image flashed before him in all its ghastly glory. “There is that,” Malcolm agreed ruefully, giving the ornament an absent-minded polish before slipping it into his pocket. “But if they think I’m poncing about with a gold enamelled dick on my chest from now on, they’ve got another think coming!”

“Pity.” Tucker rubbed the medallion, the pressure of his fingertips seeping all the way through his lover’s uniform. “Put it on your desk instead?”

“There’s only one penis I’m remotely interested in admiring in the privacy of my own room, Commander,” The younger man’s voice dropped to a satin-sheathed growl that turned Trip’s knees to jelly. “And it’s far more precious than any alien trinket. Perhaps we could discuss the matter somewhere less _public_?”

Trip Tucker, he was sure, had never moved faster in his life.


End file.
